Former office worker sent to prison in embezzling

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A former worker of a St. Louis-area ophthalmology officer has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison and ordered to repay nearly $127,000 she stole on the job.

Fifty-eight-year-old Rebecca Wagstaff of Arnold was sentenced Friday in federal court in St. Louis, where she pleaded guilty in May to a felony count of mail fraud.

Federal prosecutors say Wagstaff was general office manager of West County Ophthalmology in St. Louis County when she took the money between 2005 and November 2010. Wagstaff used the funds to pay her credit card bills and other expenses.

Restitution is mandatory, and the U.S. government says she already has paid back $60,000.